posted
I've thought this before, but after reading Brin's latest article it's on my mind again. They're both intelligent, thinking people, and they come to radically different conclusions about the world.
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I love David Brin's novels, and I appreciate his, as he said, different perspective on this. I agree with a lot of what he said here, particularly about how the segment of the republican party that has taken over the party.
A few random thoughts, and we'll see which of these I can even remember after reading that entire article and the associated stuff.
It really jars me to see Pat Buchanan coming off as a moderate in this. I associate Buchanan with the neocon movement. When he ran against Bush, Sr., he was definitely the reactionary and Bush was comparably moderate. I remember thinking he was pretty freaking scary back then.
Brin compares Clinton's interventions to Bush's. I didn't see any mention of the number of local noncombatant deaths in each. I would be curious to see such a comparison.
The weakest part of Brin's article, for me, is when he asserts, with no citation or evidence, that much of the planning for Afghanistan was done by the Clinton administration. His basic evidence for this claim seems to be the fact that we didn't screw up as badly in Afghanistan as we did in Iraq.
Like Brin, I have always considered myself a moderate. I have voted republican, democrat, libertarian, and other. Like Brin, it seems to me that the Republicans have been taken over by a fringe group, and are now moving in dangerous, radical directions. He seems to call for republicans to take back their party. I'm not sure they can. Instead, I think we might see the first viable third party in a long time crop up in the next five to ten years, as the less radical conservatives seek a party that will represent their views. As it stands, with republicans and democrats representing the ends of the spectrum, I no longer feel moderate, as Brin tries to maintain his hold on the label. The center of neocon and democrat is where "right wing" used to be, as I see it. I never thought of myself as a democrat. I am generally opposed to abortion, gun control, and welfare-statism. I am in favor of the death penalty, and small government that stays out of our lives as much as reasonably possible. And I have come to feel that I have more in common with democrats than I do with republicans.
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posted
I am not a moderate, but if you averaged all my positions and forced me to fit somewhere on the left-right continuum, I think I would fall somewhere in the center.
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Many of my individual positions are not moderate. I have strong opinions that don't come close to falling into any of the more popular frameworks. Least of all republican and democrat.
Except now they're a lot farther away from republican than they used to be, without me having changed significantly.
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posted
I wouldn't say that Brin's case for the Clinton Administration's having set things up for an invasion of Afghanistan is iron clad, but he does offer a bit more than just a completely unsupported assertion in his "expanded discussion" link in that section of the article. The evidence he sites is circumstantial, sure, but it bears consideration. I'm thinking about writing to him and asking for more information on that point. He's very prompt to respond when someone emails him a question, in my experience.
posted
I read the link. Sorry, I still thought it was the weakest part of the whole thing. Like he needed to make Bush 100% incompetent for his whole case to stand up (90% wasn't good enough ) Like I said, though, I thought there was a lot of complelling stuff in the rest of the article.
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posted
Oh, yeah, I'm not saying it was strong, I'm just saying that I didn't find to to be as weak as you made it out to be. He offers *some* evidence, just not particularly *good* evidence.
By the way, I sent you an email message a little while ago.
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) Like I said, though, I thought there was a lot of complelling stuff in the rest of the article.
